Tag Archives: life

To answer my own question…not yet. This is an unknown journey that I’m on. Many of my mornings start as early as 4:30 am now. My alarm goes off an hour later. I’m tired a lot of days and fall asleep with my laptop or notes on my lap many nights. I awaken only to turn the television, that has been watching me while I sleep, off. Everything feels like it’s moving at the speed of light lately. My fan base is growing, which is noticeable in the amount of hits this website receives, as well as how many views I get on my YouTube Channel. I have more LinkedIn connections than I know what to do with and Twitter has introduced me to people who I didn’t even know knew I existed. I’m getting so much love and encouragement from already successful people, and even celebrities, telling me to continue pressing forward. People in the entertainment industry that I’ve been a fan of, are now apart of my support system. Just like you all are. I don’t consider youfans anymore. You’re my supporters. Fans are the people who only like my pictures, but have no idea what I do.

It’s almost the end of February 2012 and I’ve already seen my business begin to shift into a more positive, and potentially profitable, direction ∞. But I’m still not there yet. Creatively, ideas are flowing, but I lack time. There are only 24 hours in a day and eight of those I give to Corporate America daily. Unfortunately, I can’t leave Corporate America yet. Bills still need to be paid and like many other people, I require consistent income. Super Son is in college and tuition isn’t cheap. Plus, I feel God telling me it’s not the right time to leave Corporate America – yet. When He tells me differently, I’ll bolt for the door, and I won’t ever look back. That’s, after all, one of my many motivations – to develop financial security doing what I want, what I love and what I am talented in.

But I’m still not there yet. That’s the burden of an overachiever. I want, need and strive for more. Bigger, better, faster, harder, stronger, smarter…

I hired one employee this year. That’s quite an achievement for me. I hired a Personal Assistant. She’s valuable to me and I hope that I can teach her enough about business that she will have a foundation towards her future career. I don’t expect her to stay with me forever. I expect her to grow and evolve into her own dreams and career. And I’m going to try not to get on her nerves too much. I know that I can be difficult to work for because my standards are extremely high. When you’re a one woman show, there’s a lot at risk involved, therefore the standards should be high because it’s your shoulders that carry the weight.

But I’m still not there yet. I want to be in a better position to hire additional staff and provide additional opportunities, so that my business can eventually grow to become nationally recognized. Detroit is home base so I’m beginning here.

Opportunities are coming. FAST. Some of which I have to continue to keep under wraps for a little while longer, but I promise it will be worth the wait. One opportunity I can share now is that I’ve been asked to become a permanent on air radio personality (aka Co-host) on the Kelly’s Kitchen Radio Show. If you’re not familiar with it, Kelly’s Kitchen is a internet-based radio show that I’ve been on a few times as a guest and as a host. It was started by Kelly White and Kalu Jones, here in Detroit on WHPR (Highland Park) a few years back. The show is Kelly’s dream child. I am now the First Lady on the team. If you haven’t listened to the show before now, I hope that you will become a regular. It airs everySaturday night at 9 pm EST on www.svmixradio.com. You can also listen to it on your smart phone.

But I’m still not there yet.

But this is a good start. Even though I lose a lot of sleep, I struggle with dating (which is going to make a great novel one day soon) as a result I come home to an empty house, I still have a great deal that I’m thankful for. And I appreciate all of you who take time out of your days to keep up with my crazy world.

The best part about getting there is still unknown to me now. But I’m really looking forward to finding out. I hope you will continue to lend me your support along the way.

With everything that has transpired in my life recently, I can honestly say that I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret the relationships that went sour, I don’t regret the business risks or decisions I made, regardless of the outcome. I find a certain amount of indescribable peace in my life. I don’t know if it is a result of maturation, age, wisdom, or a combination of them. But I don’t regret a single second.

I’ve decided to grab opportunities and moments as they arrive. About two weeks ago, I met someone I was extremely attracted to. And with the full knowledge that time with him would be limited, I enjoyed every second I spent with him. And I did so without regret. I ended a relationship that was unhealthy and unproductive. It was short lived. I don’t regret enterting into that relationship and I don’t regret ending it. Recently a business opportunity has come my way. It makes sense and will have long term benefits for me. I’m taking advantage of the opportunity and I will do so without regret. Life is too short to not live. Life is also too precious to dwell on the bad decisions we make and live fearful of taking chances. God doesn’t grant us the spirit of fear. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be cautious or knowledgeable in our decision making process. But we only have a certain amount of control over what other’s do or don’t. Therefore, decisions made shouldn’t be based on what someone else will or won’t do, can or can’t do, said or didn’t say. Decisions should only be made based on what’s within you as an individual and what you know, think, feel and care about. Decisions should be based on your own character and agenda. Not someone else’s. That is how you guarantee that you live without regrets and live life fully. Don’t fear being open to change. Change is good. I’ve said before that it promotes growth. Change also isn’t always directed specifically at you. The change you experience may also be to benefit, adjust or impact someone else involved. When that happens you are being used as an instrument of change in the Master’s Plan. There’s nothing to regret about that.

I’ve got so many plans. Places to go, things to do and many people yet to meet. Everyone comes into your life for something. Although people don’t always enter your life for the right reasons, I’ve made a conscious decision to judge each person, male or female, based on their own merits, not those of others. Therefore, there isn’t any regret. If a person falls short, it’s not due to me expecting them to fall short because of the previous person’s actions, or inaction. If a person disappoints me, it’s not because I expected them to disappoint me because the last person disappointed me. If the relationship dies, it won’t be because my last one did. I can’t change other people, I can only change how I react to and accept them. I can either accept them as they are or not deal with them at all. Either way, it is without regret.

Holding onto regrets doesn’t change the situation, change the past or set the future on a different path. Holding onto regret only burdens the holder. When you release regret, you also release the fears that were born of those regrets. When you release that fear you live a more open, honest and forgiving life. Forgiveness begins within. If you can’t forgive yourself for the plans that went awry, the relationships that went to the left (to the left, everything you own in the box to the left) or the opportunities you let slip away, you will not be able to live your life to the fullest. You will always be shackled by those regrets. That’s not a purpose driven life. That’s not how I choose to live. I don’t expect everyone to understand what I mean in this post. Experiences are like noses – everyone has one and people make judgements based on their own. I personally have a peace of mind about everything that I do, have done and will do, as well as any experiences I have had – good, bad or ugly. I don’t have any regrets.

So today, I will relax, relate, release, renew, refocus and not regret.

There comes a time when you think about what you want to do, and what it takes to do those things. I’m in the midst of a huge storm in my life. I’ve been weathering it – barely, but I’ve still been weathering it. It is taking a toll on me because I lack patience. I also only have so much control over it and I don’t like not having control. Even limited control is the same as no control to me. But I press forward anyway. Everyday a small step. Even when my small step gets stepped on by someone else’s agenda. I press on. I move forward. I keep doing and working towards fulfilling my purpose.

I need to weed my garden again. Someone recently opened my eyes to that. It wasn’t something they said or did. It was simply a physical manifestation of what I was already thinking. Having someone look me in the eyes and tell me what I already knew in my heart and soul only solidified it. There’s nothing wrong in my world except for what I allow to be wrong. And there’s nothing wrong with me doing everything by myself. I’ve been doing it for a very long time. It’s just a part of the Master’s Plan and I need to trust that. As long as I don’t give up, I will get to where I want and need to be.

I have days when I really wonder if what I’m doing matters at all. I’ve said that before. And just like before, someone I didn’t even know was paying attention to me will tell me that I am making a difference. They tell me that my words have helped them. That they have had similar experiences and can relate. They reinforce that I’m fabulous in every way. They encourage me to keep going because I’m encouraging them.

In spite of all the difficulties I’m going through right now, it is necessary for my growth as a person in general and as a woman in particular. I will be the Queen of All Media if I continue on the path set before me. I will achieve all of my dreams and put all of my fingers into various areas of media and entertainment if I continue to persevere. If a person who only knows me from Facebook, Twitter or has only spent a few hours in my presence can see it, then surely I can see it also. It’s not the money I seek. The money only pays the bills. And although I have too many bills and this year I’ve had a hard time paying them, it’s still not about the money. It’s not about becoming a celebrity either. It’s not about popularity. I still have a shy side who likes to stay at home and watch action movies. Becoming a “celebrity” might not afford me the serenity to do that. I want to make my dreams come to fruition. The same dreams I’ve had for over fifteen years.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: A dream deferred dies. A dream pursued is realized. I’m deciding to continue to pursue my dreams regardless of who notices or who doesn’t: regardless of who cares or who doesn’t. My dreams aren’t about anyone else. They are about me and how I plan to utilize my talents and knowledge to influence and potentially alter the face media. They are about how I can help others transform and improves their lives and heal their hearts. True enough, others will benefit from my dreams, however, they are not responsible for my dreams. Only I can be responsible for my dreams. Only I can take the necessary steps towards achieving those dreams. Only I can fulfill my purpose.

The same is true of you and your dreams. Do not let anyone distract you from your dreams. Plan and pray over the work you put into it, and embrace the Master’s Plan. Don’t get too involved in the “end result” or how much money you want to make in pursuit of your dreams. It’s not about the money. It’s about fulfilling your purpose. A purpose driven life equals a dream realized.

~The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. The flower blossoms and the bee comes.

Tomorrow is the day. The day my eighteen year old son graduates from high school and prepares to go to college in the fall. I knew this day was coming. I had eighteen years to prepare myself for this. But I didn’t know it would feel like this. I raised him to have leadership abilities and a mind of his own. He’s always had more freedom and responsibility than a lot of young men he knows. No curfews, but he never has stayed out too late. No restrictions, but he’s never been anywhere he shouldn’t be. He’s had every opportunity afforded to him that I could financially afford, and some that I made sacrifices for so that he could have the experiences anyway. He’s been able to travel a little bit, but I often wish there were more places I had been able to take him over the years. He’s never caused me any “trouble”. He hasn’t had any incidences that would have resulted in jail time; he’s never tried narcotics and decided on his own to remain abstinent for the time being. All things that I’ve had very frank discussions with him about but allowed him to also make his own decisions about. Needless to say, I’m proud of the decisions he made for himself. I’ve never had to come up with bail money, nurse a hangover or potential overdose and I’m not a grandmother at thirty-six years old.

There were many people who constantly said that I didn’t know what my child was doing when I wasn’t around because “single mothers never do and they always think ‘not my child’ and their child is the first one in trouble”. I’m glad I can gloat and tell those people that they obviously didn’t know my child. They also obviously didn’t know me. I’m that young mother that believes in old school discipline. Although my son hasn’t had a spanking since he was seven years old, he has a very healthy fear of his mother. He knows the expectations are great and measureable as my son. He knows that major disappointments are not taken lightly and that failure is not an option. It has been instilled in him.

One thing I always tried to teach my son was that he didn’t have to personally make mistakes to still learn from them. Life is a teacher and when you look at other people’s lives, you can learn what not to do, if you want to. My son understood this it seems because he often tells me that he is going to try not to make certain mistakes in his life because he saw what it did to someone else. I’m not sure if my son has a celebrity “role model”. After all, so many of them don’t want to be “role models”. But I think a few of their experiences have educated my son as a young black man as to how this world will treat you if you are not careful. One moment they love you and place you on the highest pedestal because you are scoring touchdowns and three point shots. The next minute they are persecuting you, taking away your endorsement deals and dragging your reputation through the deepest puddle of mud that can be found. So thank you to Kobe Bryant, Michael Vick and countless others who showed my son what not to do.

My son hasn’t had the best relationship with his father, due to no fault of his own, or of mine. You can’t force someone to love you, support you and exemplify what you think a parent should be. All you can do, is do better when your chance comes around. I never spoke ill of my son’s father to him. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t going to benefit me in anyway to do so. It wasn’t going to improve the situation at all. So I was very mindful not to engage in those kinds of conversations or confrontations in my son’s presence. It didn’t always work, because his father likes drama and enjoys being the center of attention, even when it’s negative. But I did manage to be the bigger person 95% of the time, even when I didn’t want to be. As a result, my son learned for himself, without any influence from me, the type of man his father is, and isn’t. I intentionally removed myself from the equation so that I could not be blamed (by his father) for how my son feels towards him. Whether his father sees it that way, I do not know. I honestly do not care.

After eighteen years of many sacrifices on my part, I don’t care what anyone thinks. I gave up my goals for higher education. I gave up a modeling career. I gave up a size six body. I gave up many, many, many, many men. I gave up countless hopes and dreams of traveling around the world, sipping champagne and buying designer handbags. I gave up eighteen years of many other things so that I could nurture the life of another person. There were times during those eighteen years when the thought of what I could’ve had caused me to become very depressed, so much so that I was even hospitalized for depression at one time. I suffered from and recovered from a chronic illness. I’ve had major car accidents that I was blessed to walk away alive from. I’ve lost good jobs, had crap jobs and got better jobs. With every hardship and loss, my motivation was that I had to continue on for my son. I had to show him that although life knocks you down, repeatedly, you have to get back up and keep living. I had to show him what it was to be super. And in the process, I showed myself.

I don’t know what I’m going to do when my son leaves for college. What do you do when your best friend, your anchor, your reason for persevering daily goes away to explore the next phase of his own life? I don’t know. This is my first time having this experience. Hopefully, between now and then my career will catapult forward to the point where I’ll have my own radio show, a couple more books published along with the opportunity and finances to travel. Maybe I’ll even meet my Superman. I don’t know what will happen next. What I do know is that tomorrow signifies a new phase in life for me and my son. When the sun rises in the morning, it will mean one thing to him and something else to me. When the sun sets in the evening the same will also be true. And I promise that I will try not to cry all day.

I had many years to remember with my son. Eighteen years and nine months to be exact. That’s a lengthy investment. Now it’s his turn to go forth and be super. He can do it. I have the utmost belief in him. After all, he is Super Son.

Today I watched footage from the royal wedding. As I watched Kate and William become husband and wife, along with millions of other people worldwide, I thought of many things: What is the Royal Family’s last name (Windsor)? Will they now call Kate by her full first name (Catherine)? Will she be referred to as Princess or Duchess (it should be Princess since her husband will one day inherit the throne)? And where did Fergie and Andrew’s daughters get those horrible hats from (the Queen’s millinery was obviously not their choice)? The wedding also made me wonder this: When will I have the opportunity to get married again?

Being single has its advantages and some people see being single as a bonus to life. People who prefer to be single like not having to commit to one individual and like not having to make decisions and consider another person’s thoughts or feelings in the process. Those are both selfish reasons, so that explains why people like that are single. Then there are people like myself who see having a relationship or marriage as an enhancement to their lives. The thought of having someone to share experiences, commonalities and life with means a lot to some people. For some people, relationships are taken seriously and done with purpose.

Then I thought about how my desires and criteria have changed over the years. When I was in my twenties, I married the wrong man. That decision completely changed my mate criteria. As a result, in my late twenties, I wanted a different type of man; someone who was more than just good to look at. I met that man and we were together for three years. We made plans to become married but that went downhill because he damaged our trust. That experience influenced my criteria again. I still want the same basic traits in a spouse (including but not limited to good character, integrity, honesty and great sex) but unfortunately meeting men like that has been nearly impossible as evidenced in my other blogs. Leaving me to wonder if a man for me even exists, and if he does, is he tall?

Over the years, I have become more openminded towards dating different types of men. My husband doesn’t have to be a black man. He can also be a very attractive, tall, White, Latino, Samoan, or multiracial man. I haven’t met any that are interested in dating me yet, but I’m open to the possibilities. I imagine as I become older, my mate criteria will continue to adjust with my age. If I’m still unmarried in my forties, (which is three years from now), I may be open to dating younger men, instead of sticking to my preference of older men. If I’m still unmarried in my sixties, I might be open to dating men my age who are in wheelchairs. If I’m still unmarried in my eighties, my only requirement may be that a man has a pulse.

When, or if, the day comes, I will not ask the minister to remove the word “obey” from my wedding vows. A wife is supposed to obey her husband and obey doesn’t mean what most people think it means. Until that day comes, when I am blessed to meet my husband (which may not be in God’s plan for me and I’m completely aware of that), I think I’m going to just marry my shoes. It seems completely logical to me. My shoes make a positive statement about me whenever I wear them, they compliment me, they make me feel sexy, and when one pair acts up I have others to wear. My shoes don’t require that I call first; they don’t get mad when I look at or buy another pair and they get along with each other. So that’s what I’m going to do. My Steven Maddens and I can live happily ever after – together.

Everyone has things they want in life. They also have their idea of what their ideal life would be like. About fifteen years ago my ideal life would have been to have had five children, a loving husband, a huge house on a lot of land and the money to afford it all. My reality was vastly different. Instead I had one child, several miscarriages, and an abusive codependent husband who gambled away the household money. Today my ideal life is also different from the reality. In my ideal life, I would be married to a man whom I could share experiences and goals with and we’d have a media empire. The reality is that I can’t meet a man worthy of dating me more than one time and I have to build the empire I want solo. But the reality doesn’t stop me from wanting more. It does, unfortunately, sometimes dampen some of the excitement. As I’m reflecting on my regrets, my dreams, my failed relationships, rejection and my ever looming single status, I do know this: although I don’t know the reasons, seasons change and my lifetime may not have the love and marriage I hoped for, my experiences make for really good stories, which will one day make me very wealthy. There’s always a silver lining to my clouds.

There’s so much of my life that I could never have made up in a million years, such as the date from hellI had earlier in April 2011. There are authors who can only talk about other people’s experiences and hope we as an audience find it realistic enough to read about. But a lot of what I have written thus far, and will write and publish forthcoming, is based on an actual situation or person I have had a personal experience with. Yes, I use my imagination to make some of it more interesting, I don’t reveal anything that I could be sued for (names for instance) and I take certain literary liberties such as changing locations and details. However, I can honestly say that some of the men I wrote about in “The Goodie Bag; The Erotic Fiction Collection” are real men. None of them were my husband; some of them weren’t even my boyfriends. They didn’t necessarily have feelings for me or me for them, but the chemistry was good while it lasted and it made for good intimacy and sex. That’s the absolute truth. Not too many women get to say that they actually fulfilled some of their fantasies. And very few men get to say they were inspiration for erotic fiction. What is most interesting to me is that the men who inspired some of my work haven’t even bothered to read it. That’s too bad for them because according to male customers who have bought and read “The Goodie Bag”, it’s a very good read.

If nothing else, although my experiences haven’t always been pleasant, and I don’t have my ideal life (and I don’t always feel positive that I ever will), but my experiences combined with my talent will take me places. Maybe some of those places will be Paris, Dubai, Morocco and Rio. It would be nice to share it all with a man who loves me, and whom I love in return. And if not, my not-so-ideal life will still make for better fiction, that I hope will lead to everything else I’d like my media empire to be made of.